Advice to 2019 Parents from a 2018 Parent survivor

Parent Cafe
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<p>I would offer some advice to the parents on the cusp of what I assure you will be a busy, anxious, and exciting year. Let Allow me to start with the end and work backwards. My daughter applied to 24 colleges this past year. She applied to all of the Ivies, except Columbia, and the the usual list of top tier schools like Wash U, Georgetown, UNC, Duke, Vanderbilt, U Chicago, etc. She applied to a few in the Patriot League, and a number of great state schools (William and Mary, UVA, Penn State, Clemson, VA Tech, and The College of New Jersey) and other great schools like Case Western. She was shut out in the Ivies (wait listed at Princeton, Wash U), accepted at a number of the others and was deciding between Lehigh, William and Mary, and Colgate. In the end, and I mean the end as in deadline day at 7PM, she opted for Colgate and I could not have been happier for her. The choice was perfect for her. </p>

<p>Here are some things I learned:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Quantity does not mean quality and less is more when it comes to number of applications. We picked way too many schools which made the financial aid, CSS, IDOC, FAFSA, etc. paperwork a big problem that quickly turned into a second job for me just trying to keep track of it. She would not have gone to many of the schools we applied to so it made no sense to apply. Distance seems like a non factor until you are looking it in the eye. Try to stick to 4 hours. It is in many cases the golden rule. Additionally, we got caught up in the whole idea of prestige being an overly important factor, which became less so in the end. Pick about 8 or 10 schools, set a distance from home requirement, and be on your way. And...it is not cheap to apply. You can expect to pay about $100 per school just for the application itself, not including the expense of visiting. You will have to submit act, sat, subject tests, all of which add up. Additionally, many applications have a supplemental essay that your child will have to write.</p></li>
<li><p>The schools know the deal about when they are somebody's safety school and when they are an actual choice. They track access/logins to their respective portals, calls to the admissions office, visiting, interviewing, etc as a measure of interest. That is why you need to limit the number of schools. Make sure you kid is the person who makes the contact, and not the parent. Some schools are downright prickly about communicating only with the applicant and not the parent (UVA).</p></li>
<li><p>Keep an eye on the small stuff and it will tell you how the school manages big stuff. In the end Lehigh fell out of consideration based on a number of random events that left us with a bad feeling. Their admitted students day was disorganized and lacked a feeling that they really wanted the kids to come there. We stood in a long line to check in as they manually colored dots with a magic marker that corresponded to the respective college. Lunch was a disaster of congestion, student speakers failed to connect with the students, etc. Colgate and William and Mary were the polar opposite of Lehigh. Both schools showed a keen, genuine interest in her coming to their school and showed it in subtle ways, that in the end made a difference. An example, at W and M, they display a banner at their admitted students day with every admitted kid's full name on it in alphabetical order by first name. The WM student ambasssadors were happy and friendly and enthusiastic to the visitors. They had a student dance group, cheer leaders, and great speakers who connected with the kids and parents. Colgate and William and Mary knew and understood the importance of "closing the deal" with the parents and kids and as a result, their admitted students day was well executed, exciting, organized. Colgate was similar to WM Pre-printed name tags of the admitted student and their hometown were waiting on us upon arrival, a special admitted students t shirt and sun glasses were given to the kids, and the agenda featured a well run program for the parents and the kids. The colleges make you RSVP for these events so how can they be unprepared when you arrive? </p></li>
<li><p>When you visit the schools as a hs junior know that about 75 percent of the kids on the tour are not going to be admitted. That fact is important when you child is looking left and right at the other kids there. The best indicator are the admitted students events when everyone there was actually offered admission. Those are their future classmates.</p></li>
<li><p>Start early. Once the common app opens you should be off and running.</p></li>
<li><p>Take the sat and the act tests. Your child will surprise you on one of them in a good way.</p></li>
<li><p>Finally, as I could go on for days, enjoy the ride. You will get to spend a lot of great time with your kid going through this rite of passage and really the biggest decision of their lives and the most important they will make short of selecting their spouse. Keep that in mind when you are fretting about a deadline. It will all turn out in the end. As long as your child is happy with the school they are accepted to, everyone will be happy.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>Thanks so much for this post. I agree that 24 colleges are way too many to apply to, but there is that temptation in the super competitive echelon, as everyone keeps saying it is such a crapshoot. And I do have a friend’s kid who was a star, had a hook, wants to be a math professor, had virtually perfect scores, etc. He applied to about 10-12 schools and at last minute, added UPenn. In the end, besides a super safety, and a match that was about 30,000 students bigger than he wanted, UPenn was the only school he got into. He had not even visited, but now that he has gone to the accepted student day, actually met with many math profs and has done some more research into the Math dept, he feels it is absolutely the perfect fit for him. But I keep thinking, what if he had not added that one last school? So as I get ready to embark on this 4th and final go around for college app, I just know my instinct is to encourage DS to apply to too many schools, just based on this anecdote (and one very similar story of another kid). I definitely do not want DS to apply to 24 schools, and would not let him apply to schools he would not go to, but I think I will need an intervention…</p>

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<p>I applied to 17 schools and I would recommend that applicants apply to as many schools as humanly possible if they can crank out good essays quickly. I was wait listed and rejected by a total of 11 schools. Had I only applied to those 11 or 7 or 10 I would have nowhere to go. Make sure to add a nice amount of matches and reaches because you never know. Put only around 2 safeties (both my safeties offered me full rides so it was a tougher decision than most would have to make but they were excellent options that I would have been happy going to had I not gotten in to any reaches/matches). The only way to counteract falling acceptance rates is with more applications-just look at how many med schools people apply to since they all have low acceptance rates.</p>

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<p>I suggest 4-6 schools. Choose them carefully, visit, and make sure they are schools your son or daughter would go to. Spend quality time on those essays. It may be that applying to fewer schools will positively affect each application, making admittance more likely, rather than less.</p>

<p>Avoid fixation on any one school or group of schools: for instance, the Ivies are all very different, so applying to a lot of Ivies makes no sense. Start off visiting an LAC, a state university, and something alternative, to get a feel for general direction of search. Sometimes a visit to a school that is not a fit is the most informative…</p>

<p>Spending time on the visit and research end of the application process can save a lot of time, energy, money and heartbreak. Those who apply to many schools end up doing this backwards, doing the deeper investigation after being admitted. Colleges know you are doing this.</p>

<p>We liked Loren Pope’s books, “Colleges that Change Lives” (also a websit, national fairs) and “Looking Beyond the Ivies.”</p>

<p>Be aware that Ivies, with an exception or two, use teaching assistants, grad students who lead the class in discussion sections and do the grading. Lecturers are, however, top notch. Look into distribution requirements, course requirements for possible majors, professors. On the visit, hang out in the dining hall or book store or on the green. Tours and open-houses can be misleading: delve deeper. Prestige is not a good motivator.</p>

<p>The person who got into UPenn could have had UPenn on a list of 6 schools. That would have been strategically wise without the other 18 schools on the list. </p>

<p>The whole admissions process has been thrown off kilter by the huge number of applications now done by each student, and this excess may even be making it harder to get into schools. Tell the colleges on your list of 4-6 that they are a top choice for you and make that true. Again, time spent visiting will be better than the time and money spent on 20 extra applications.</p>

<p>The saddest thing is when a student in a certain high school applies to many many schools, some of which are throw aways for that student but another student in the same school has his or her heart set on it. Colleges often limit the number of admits from any one school. My kids avoided applying to a school that one of their friends or classmates had a strong interest in, unless they also considered it a top top choice. Please realize that any slot that is given to your child, means someone else didn’t get that offer, so applications need to be serious.</p>

<p>Finally, anyone reading this might like to know that many selective schools- more each year- are test optional meaning you do not have to submit SAT’s or ACT at all. For some merit scholarships the scores may still be necessary, but otherwise, don’t limit your choices according to your scores. Google “test optional colleges.” You may be surprised.</p>

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<p>Some years ago, my neighbor’s DD applied to 20 something schools which I thought was over kill. She applied to all of the Ivies, Amherst, WIlliams, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Colby, Bates, Colgate, Lehigh, Lafayette, JHU, Duke, and some more schools that I can’t even remember. She and her parents absolutely wanted the most selective school that would accept her. She was not accepted at any of the most selective schools, and accepted to Colby, Bates, Lehigh, Lafayette and safeties. But then she cleared the waitlist at Swarthmore and off she went there. She also cleared the Middlebury WL. There was absolutely no way she would have been able to pick or anyone else, that she’d get accepted at either of those two schools. It was only be doing a wide sweep that they were included. Though she also made the Wesleyan WL, she declined a spot as further focus on the school made her decide that was not a school she wanted. She was torn between Lehigh and Lafayette in her choices and took Lafayette because they offered her a nice merit award, one of the few she was offered and she figured she didn’t like her other choices so much more to pay the differential.</p>

<p>A lot of kids in my area really like Lehigh, by the way. Her sister is going there, her other sister is going to Colgate, and the so despite the disorganized Admissions Office,the folks around here like the school, a lot. The one dept that your student does NOT have to deal with once at the school is Admissions, so how it is run is not always a good indicator on how the school is run and how good the academic attention and opportunities are. Wesleyan, for example, has not improved a whit in terms of a lot of the ways they do things, but they totally revamped their admissions dept to become more competitive in getting the students. Reminds me of a hospital cafeteria with the WORST food ever. So bad the salt bounces of the food and into your face and eyes if you lean over it while salting. It was also a line arrangement and dismal looking Hospital invested a fortune to revamp. It now looks wonderful with the workers all in crisp white chef outfits and the food offered kiosk style. I got salt in my eyes when I seasoned my tasteless chicken. Same fare just gussied up and thankfully has nothing to do with the quality of medical care there. So it is with admissions tours events. My kids had NOTHING to do with admissions once accepted.</p>

<p>For those seeking money a wide net should be cast. There have always been surprises for us and we don’t get fin aid. One of my son’s friends this year got a $10K grant money difference in two like schools. Would have never had that comparision but he added the school even though it seemed redundant as he had two like schools on the list. For him, that one additional common app netted him $40k over 4 years. My one neighbor was astounded that her daughter was offered more than $20K a year in merit (above paragraph anecdote) to a school that they nearly left off the list. A neighbor’s kid is going to UMich, a late addition to his already full list and only so done at urging of a friend. He got in with a $10K merit award and that makes it a good $20K a year less expensive than other colleges being considered. His parents didn’t even know he applied there. So some serendipity in the process can reap some benefits. the friend who urged the kid is going to Georgia tech on a merit award making it $15K a year less expensive for her to go there over UMich which was her first choice and GT was a wild card for her. She was UMich all the way until she got the offer with the award from GT.</p>

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<p>The distance restriction is an absolute for some families and just not an issue for others. I’m more concerned about access to an airport than travel time, and neither really matters if the school is a good fit for my kid. If she’s old enough to go to college, she’s old enough to figure out the travel. If she wants to come home for breaks, she will, regardless of distance, and if she doesn’t want to come home, the distance won’t be the deciding factor.</p>

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<p>I think a carefully thought-out list of 10 schools will be more successful than an ill-conceived list of 20+ schools.</p>

<p>Ds1 applied to 11 schools (9 yes, 1 no, 1 WL), and ds2 applied to eight schools (6 yes, including the one he really wanted EA, 1 no, 1 WL). </p>

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<p>Another one of thinks more than 10 is not necessary, All my kids started the process with 15-20 colleges, but alittle research along with some visits made it easy to get the actual application lists under 10. I’m not sure where this thinking that kids need to apply to a dozen if not 2 dozen colleges is coming from, but it is definitely not necessary and not even well-advised…there is just too much time, work, energy and money involved for very little yield since each student can only attend 1 college.</p>

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<p>From the beginning, I have set an upper limit of 10 schools to my D as it is expensive to apply to many schools. After school visits and suggestions in this forum, we ended up with a list of 8 schools with 2 reaches and 2 safeties. My D applied to 6 of them EA and 1 RD but did not apply to the second safety as she got several early admission already. Seven schools is manageable and she got accepted by 6. Of the 6 admitted schools, she need to submit further applications for scholarships at half of them. Imagine you have a lot of schools applied, these work loads will multiply too. Also, you don’t want to rush through the essays, or be overwhelmed and affect performance at school.
Besides the number of application, I think one important advise is to have the test schedule plan early. Get the test prepared thorough over the Summer before Junior. Take the first SAT and/or ACT before Winter and finish the retake (if needed) by Spring. Focus on AP and Subject in May/June. Get all test done before Summer then use the Summer break after junior to set up the school list, visit schools, and start working on the application and essays.</p>

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<p>I’d add that if your child is prone to high anxiety in these matters, applying to an Early Action or Rolling Admission safety early can really pull down the stress levels (if they are an easy in of course.) </p>

<p>I have mixed feelings on quantity of schools applied. It really, really depends on the kid. There are some good reasons to cast a wide net. If your child is interested in a competitive major… BFA theatre, engineering… a lot of schools might be necessary. If your child is a borderline candidate for the type of school they want or if they have high financial need, casting a wide net can be helpful.</p>

<p>Our D applied to 12 schools… 4 in-state publics (our publics have become notoriously iffy even for high candidates,) 5 highly selective “meets full need” schools and 3 high merit potential schools. She got into 3 of the publics, 1 highly selective (and a few really nicely written wait-list letters lol,) and all the merit schools. D didn’t care about prestige but she desperately wanted that small LAC environment. Unfortunately, if your EFC is under 20K, finding a financially viable LAC is tough. Even with generous merit, you could end up with a 10K gap. You sort of have to go for “full needs” schools and they are just hard to get into. </p>

<p>Long way of saying I was mortified when I first saw how many schools kids apply to these days but I’d be lying to say it didn’t benefit D.</p>

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<p>A real fan of rolling or EA here…try to identify one or two schools your child would attend that have rolling or EA and apply as early as possible. D3 received her acceptance to Tulane at the end of October; that enabled her to delete a number of schools from her list. I don’t believe there’s a set limit to the number of schools one should apply to. Rather, it’s a matter of weighing the cost and time involved and how the student and the family value them. Some kids are up for the challenge of juggling all the extra essays and managing that many more deadlines, documents, etc. and others aren’t; some parents don’t mind the cost while others want or need to cap it. If possible, I tend to think 10 well researched, representing a nice blend of safety, match and reaches could be enough but I do believe each family is different.</p>

<p>I also want to say, regarding the OP’s comment about a 4 hour max for distance, that we live on the west coast and all 3 of mine elected to go to the east coast. I wouldn’t want to place that restriction and, even though I would have loved close proximity to an airport, one of mine attends a rural school. Yes, 3-4 times a year it’s a very long day for her and it can be costly but the fit has been perfect for her and we don’t have any regrets. Also, tbh, we live in a wonderful area and my kids all wanted to experience the 4 seasons but, ultimately, hope to settle eventually back where they grew up. I’m surely hoping that’s the way it plays out!</p>

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<p>Just jumping in briefly to address the UVa bit. While we love interacting without applicants, we’re happy to talk to parents! Parents shouldn’t hesitate to call if they have questions.:)</p>

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<p>My son applied to 9 schools (in 2011) and in hindsight it was probably 4 too many as his list was safety heavy. He was accepted at all his schools - only two which we felt were reaches. If I could turn back the clock, knowing what I know now, I think a better approach would have been two more more reaches and two less safeties. </p>

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<p>It will vary by child. One of my kids applied to 7, one to 3, and one to 13 schools. The last could have cut out a few matches when she got the U Chicago EA admittance, but the apps were done so off they went. Her list was reach-heavy, but she was accepted to all but one (the WashU waitlist!). Admissions decisions for very highly selective schools are hard to predict, and she wasn’t sure in November to apply to any binding ED programs.</p>

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<p>^^^Our oldest is applying to 8 schools. One financial reach, one match, and the rest all fall in the safety category, assuming the merit aid comes through. My oldest wants all those safeties and if it comes down to them, the amount we have to pay out of pocket may be an important factor (e.g. free versus 30k) for her. (She knows the less mom and dad have to pay, the more freedom she’ll have, so it makes sense for her to weigh that freedom against the individual school’s programs).</p>

<p>If I had to guess, our second will probably only apply to 2 or 3 schools, all of which could be categorized as admission and financial safeties. </p>

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<p>Big thumbs up for rolling admissions as long as you are happy to go to the school. For S1 (NMF, good but not great grades, very good recs, MechE), we applied early to Auburn (rolling), Colo. School of Mines (rolling), and GaTech (EA instate). He had admission and a good scholarship to Auburn in early? October. He immediately slashed the RD list to one. Compared to his friends and their families, we had a very manageable and low stress application season.</p>

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<p>It’s good the OP posted this thread, i noticed it’s the first post. Most long time readers know that a strong application strategy does not require so many applications. Doing the work upfront with a reasonable application strategy does take a ton of stress out of the situation and allows the kids to enjoy their senior year…something I think is still very important. </p>

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<p>I have read all of the arguments, but I still believe there are valid reasons to apply to a large number of schools. Admissions can be too unpredictable for a high stats student. It is easy to say in retrospect after the decisions were made that is was too many applications…okay, all of the Ivy League colleges were rejections, so now that seems like it was chasing prestige and those applications and were a waste of time and money, but would the opinion be different if the student had been accepted to even one? Hopefully, the safety schools are all a waste in the end, but it is folly not to apply to them, correct? Where did Colgate rank when the application process began? How about Lehigh and William and Mary? Were they always the top 3 contenders or did they only become so after rejections and FA offers were on the table? If applications had been limited to say 8, would all 3 even have made the cut? Hindsight is 20/20. I would prefer my kids end up with too many options, having wasted several hundred $ on extra applications rather than not being satisfied with the results and wishing they had applied to more.</p>

<p>“The schools know the deal about when they are somebody’s safety school and when they are an actual choice. They track access/logins to their respective portals, calls to the admissions office, visiting, interviewing, etc as a measure of interest.”</p>

<p>I don’t really get most of this. After the application is complete, and a student has verified that the information has been received, why would they need to log into the portal again until decision day? How does this show interest? As for calls to the admissions office, why? What is the purpose? Seems like it would be logged as annoying, not interest. Also unless it is a nearby college, I think most admissions realize the correlation between family income and visits. Interviews with alumni are also much more prevalent in metropolitan areas and not accessible to all students, </p>

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<p>There is no problem to apply to a lot of reach schools as long as you can handle the cost, the work, the stress, and the likely frustration.</p>

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<p>Inasmuch as all of us here exchange opinions based on our experience, and perhaps common sense, there are times that some opinions appear quite off the mark. I understand that there might be cases that require a MASSIVE number of applications (highly competitive students seeking merit aid, medical programs, etc) but short of exceptions, it is not a good idea to apply to a large number of schools. And this for the simples of reasons … it is hard to maintain the corretc focus and present compelling applications to so many targets. </p>

<p>The reality is that a well-researched list of schools and the use of an intelligent and REALISTIC early admission approach renders a large list of schools useless. Fwiw, the argument of needing a large number of schools to avoid the purported “crapshoot” element is simply a bunch of bull. Most students will see their rejections come in well-defined strata that correspond to their … appeal to the schools. For instance, people who apply to all 10-12 usual candidates of all ivies plus MIT/Stanford/Chicago will usually see pretty consistent responses from the schools. This does NOT mean one should not apply to uber-reaches, but that the duplicating the applications, especiallt when serial in nature is NOT a good idea, and especially when schools are totallty different safe and except for their affiliation in an athletic league. </p>

<p>A compelling set of applications should start with a small number of REAL safeties or rolling admissions schools, a well-organized list of early applications, and if needed a few additional RD schools. All of them should represent solid matches both academically and financially. Reading the statistics correctly and not be fooled by the bottom 25 percentile will (and should) prune down the list substantially. </p>

<p>All in all, too much time is wasted in dragging a wide net, investing in multiple and endless visits, and trying to keep up with dozens of communications with schools that are pipe dreams. Be realistic in your assessment and deliberate in your choices. Make sure to learn all you can about a SMALL number of schools and present the very best application you can, including the very best essays possible. And, on this latter element, it appears that this is often the most overlooked part of the application process … if the shared essays on CC are any indication. Many students admit to have rushed to finish essays or relied on the very poor advice of adults around them. </p>

<p>Starting the application process from the bottom-up reduces the agony and ends up working much better than a scattershooting approach with little sense as a USNews Rankings-centric application process tends to be.</p>